


Nothing More Dangerous (Than a Boy With Charm)

by anaer



Series: you can take me for a ride [1]
Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Adventures: Avengers, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Bisexuality, Getting Together, Humor, M/M, Romance, Self-Acceptance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 14:24:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6082758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anaer/pseuds/anaer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Any issues Peter Parker may or may not have had with a certain Remy Lebeau were entirely because the man was an annoying, low-life criminal who'd somehow managed to con his way out of a fight, and not because - as Matt Murdock claimed - he was in any way repressed and/or attracted to the man.  Because that was just ridiculous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing More Dangerous (Than a Boy With Charm)

**Author's Note:**

> I started this fic back in...wow, 2011 as a gift for a friend. So five years later, here I am, fic finally finished. And I have so many other fic ideas for this same universe, which was originally based in Marvel Adventures but really became an amalgamation of just various comic stuff. 
> 
> Title of the fic taken from Candyman by Christina Aguilera, which is basically the theme song for this fic.

The loud music blasting through Tony Stark’s “garage” (in actuality, his highly secure second sub-basement workshop where he made all the weird inventions) was enough to deafen any normal being, be they human or superhuman.  On a regular day, Peter Parker (more commonly known as the Amazing Working College Student Journal-Scientist Spider-man!) might have protested the racket, but today, slinking about the ceilings, he was grateful for the noise that covered the practically non-existent sound his climbing around made.  It meant that there was no way Ironman would be able to sense him coming, and, after three long days of trying to get the billionaire’s attention, Peter would finally get the advice he so desperately needed.  His movements across the ceiling were quick and driven as he finally crossed the barrier between the outside of Tony’s work area and inside.  He glanced down and around and almost lost his grip from annoyance when the billionaire playboy was nowhere to be found, but a second glance caught two feet barely sticking out from under some strange, giant contraption that looked fairly innocuous, but knowing Tony, would likely turn out to be anything but. 

Dropping down onto the ground, Peter crouched and peered under the thing.  A plethora of tools were scattered on the ground down there, but he couldn’t quite make out what they were or what his teammate was doing.

“Are you building a doomsday device again?” he shouted over the music.

“Holy fuck!” was the ever-so-pleasant response he received, along with a loud clang as the object of his search jumped at the intrusion and banged his head against the thing.  The music cut off seemingly of its own accord before a rather harassed, annoyed looking Tony rolled out to glare at him.  The way his hand clenched around the soldering iron it held seemed a tad threatening to the arachnid-themed superhero, but his spider sense wasn’t going off yet, so it couldn’t be too serious.

“No, I’m not building a doomsday device.  And, just for the record, I have never built a doomsday device before.”

“Yeah, but you invented one, and then A.I.M. tried to build it that one time—”

“Peter,” Tony cut him off, rolling back under the not-doomsday-device.  He continued to speak, his voice slightly muffled from where he was.  “I’ve told you before, you never know when you might just need to bring about the end of everything.  For the good of mankind.” 

Peter blinked from where squatted before jumping up to crouch more comfortably on the ceiling.  “Sure, whatever.  But Tony...that’s not why I came.  I, uh…need your help.  Advice.  Answers to the questions that constantly plague my lonely existence.”

“Hn,” came the distracted grunt from the once more barely visible body.  Loud clangs followed, and Peter decided that was as good a positive reply as any. 

“Well, see…the thing is…um…how do I say this…well…I had sex!” he exclaimed.  The noises ceased, and then suddenly Tony rolled back out.  Peter couldn’t quite pin the look on his face, but the way his head began to tingle slightly boded ill for him. 

“Run that by me one more time?”

“I, uh…I had sex.  Um, a few nights ago.  And—”

The other man cut him off and flashed him a rather odd grin from behind his beard. Peter was glad he was on the ceiling right now, because his older teammate was looking rather like he’d like to pat his head in congratulations or something else one did to small children they were proud of. “Wow.  Peter.  I’m proud of you, finally putting the fact that your girlfriend who you dated for years and thought was the love of your life dumped you and then moved as far as she possibly could away from you without actually leaving the country behind you and expanding your horizons.”

“Excuse you!  MJ only moved to California because she wants to be an actress!”

“Right.  Of course she did.”  And that wasn’t condescension _or_ sarcasm dripping from his voice at all because Tony was a great friend who would never imply something like that about the love of Peter’s life, no matter how true it might or might not be.

Besides, it had been a _mutual break-up_.

“This has nothing to do with Mary-Jane, anyway.  See, I had sex – yes, I know I already said that twice – but the thing is, he—,” and Peter found himself cut off again.

“He?  Is that what this is about? Peter, if you wanted to explore your sexuality, you could’ve just come to me.  I would’ve been more than willing to help out, and without any leftover emotional baggage.”

“I wasn’t exploring—wait, what about _Cap_?” Peter cut himself off, staring at Tony with something akin to horror, no mask to hide it. Everyone knew that Tony and Steve were in a long-term committed relationship, and Spiderman got the sense that if he did something like that with Tony and Cap found out, a well-thrown shield would be taking his head off.

The grin on Tony’s face, though, was downright perverted, and the beard only added to the affect.  “Steve’s not adverse to the occasional threesome,” he commented.  “Just ask Thor.  Or Clint.” The grin grew.  “Or Carol—I never would’ve taken her as quite so kinky, but, damn…” He trailed off, caught up in the memories, as Peter visibly blanched.

“Oh my god, Tony, _tmi_ much?  And I’m not gay!”  Peter paused. “Mostly,” he added under his breath.

Iron Man interrupted into a much too perfectly timed coughing fit, one grease-stained gloved hand conveniently covering his mouth. 

“That one time with Johnny was purely sex pollen, you _know_ that!”  In fact, Peter still had nightmares about waking up in bed next to the Human Torch, completely naked and with burns in places he would rather not talk about. 

“You had sex with a man, Peter, unless I misinterpreted what you just said.”  The exasperated college student was beginning to forget why he had decided to come to Tony Stark for advice instead of, say, Wolverine.  It was all amounting to the same basic reaction. 

Instead of just crawling out in a tizzy, though, Peter shot back, “I was drunk.”  He knew it was a poor excuse the minute before it left his mouth, but sometimes his brain didn’t connect fast enough to stop his own stupidity.  Tony definitely knew the large amounts of alcohol it took to get him hammered after the one and only time the Avengers had ever had a drinking contest (that Cap had vetoed on account of Tony’s alcoholism prompting Tony to go behind his significant other’s back and plan the biggest party the Avengers had ever had—despite the fact that he did not, in fact, take part in the contest, the party more than made up for it to him—and, ultimately, the contest had ended with all the Avengers except Thor, Logan, Tony, and Peter himself either passed out or puking in one of the five million bathrooms in Avengers Tower) and if the smirk that wasn’t even being hid was anything to go by, the other man knew he was lying.  “I was tipsy,” he amended.

“ _Really_?” the engineer snorted. 

“Fine, I was slightly less than tipsy!  But my senses were still impaired—you know I would never do that all willy-nilly like, _especially_ with a guy.  Especially not with someone I barely know!  I mean, I slept with _Gambit_ , of all people.”

Something in Tony’s brain seemed to connect at that, and his face seemed stuck somewhere between disbelief, awe, and envy.  “You slept with one of the X-Men?  Do you realize what you’ve done?  I’ve been trying to get with one for years, but they’re a pretty close-knit bunch!  Practically incestuous, the lot of them.  Even Storm’s stopped giving Thor so much hanky now she’s back with them!”

“Whether or not he’s an X-Man is really not the point here, Tony!  I’m having a major crisis right now.”

“You slept with Gambit.  I don’t see what the problem is.  I don’t see how there could _be_ a problem, closet issues or not.”

“He doesn’t remember it!” Peter exclaimed. 

Tony sat up slowly and sighed, running a gloved hand through hair that came out rather greasy for it.  “Clearly, I’m not getting the whole picture here.  So start from the beginning.”

_Ten Weeks Before_

It was a quiet night—peaceful, even, as Spider-Man swung through the city skies.  Tonight was one of the rare nights where he found he could actually enjoy his patrols with no supervillains around and only a few serious low-level crimes to stop. Also, beating up low-level crooks was actually somewhat soothing, no matter what Doc Samson might say about his mental health if he ever heard that.  The sky was clear, with at least two stars showing through the severe light pollution, which, as far as the young superhero was concerned, was a great feat. For once, Peter figured he might just get home before dawn.  Hell, he might even get a whole four hours of sleep. 

It always was when he was being positive that things started to go wrong. 

In hindsight, Spider-man had no idea what made him stop. He hadn’t been tired or about to run out of web or anything like that.  His spider-sense hadn’t even tickled, let alone buzzed or tingled.  In fact, as far as he could remember, he had only stopped so that his spandex-clad self could sit back for a second and enjoy the night…and to eat the dinner he had picked up from Alfredo, who absolutely loved to give him free pizza after that one time he had saved the man’s son from a biker with an attitude problem. 

Either way, Peter was sitting perched on the ledge of a random building, his mask scrunched up above his nose for easy munching of his last slice of pizza when it happened.  A loud clang from behind caught his attention, and he jerked his head around, all the while trying to capture the string of cheese from his last bite all the way in his mouth.  He was mostly unsuccessful, leaving him looking kind of odd with his mask above his nose and a long line of cheese connecting his mouth to the half-eaten pizza slice in his hand as he watched a backpack suddenly throw itself out of the top of the air duct system on the other side of the roof.  Spider-man blinked, though it was impossible to tell through the white lenses on his costume.  A second later, the backpack was followed by a long, fit, spandex-clad body that should have in no way been able to fit in that small of a space, and his spider sense suddenly began to tingle.  Of course, it didn’t take the spider sense for Peter to realize that his dinner was now over.  With a quick sigh, he shoved the rest of the pizza in his mouth, chewed, swallowed, and yanked his mask back down almost simultaneously while shooting a web line to snag the bag.  The moment it was in his hand, the collegiate hero deemed it safe to start talking.

“An air duct?  Really?  Did you honestly just steal something and then crawl out of an air duct?  That has got to be, like, the biggest cliché I have ever seen, and, trust me,” Peter laughed, “With the type of idiot criminals I face every day, I see a lot of stupid clichés.  But an _air duct_?  How the hell do you even _fit_ in that thing?”

To give the guy credit, he barely even responded to the taunt.  Instead, he straightened and turned to smirk at Spider-man, and the hero felt only the barest hint of surprise when he noticed that the thief couldn’t be that much older than him.  Although, aside from the outfit, he looked a tad, well…grungy.  Long auburn hair was pulled into a messy ponytail/bun thing and the beginning traces of a five o’ clock shadow were also visible on what was a generally handsome jaw. 

…Not that Peter noticed things like how handsome other men’s jaws might or might not be.  Still, the fact that his adversary was wearing sunglasses while it was this dark didn’t really add to whatever positive image the superhero might have been beginning to see.

It had been silent for at least ten seconds.  Time to start talking again.

“And I know the tight spandex look is totally in—I mean, I obviously don’t run around in this outfit for _comfort_ —and the black totally fits your whole ‘breaking and entering’ thing you’ve got going on…but pink? Don’t you think the pink stripes up the sides might be just a little gauche?  Especially with the whole ‘sunglasses at night’ thing.  The nineties called:  they want their style back.”

“It takes a real man to wear magenta,” the thief finally responded.  The fairly thick Cajun accent was not at all what Spider-man had expected to hear.  “And it definitely ain’t as _gauche_ as dressin’ up like a bug.”  The tone was light, definitely a joke, but Peter still found himself taking personal offense to that.

“I am not bug-themed!  I am arachnid-themed!  God, you would think people would understand things like that by now.  See, now you’ve officially ruined my night.  I was just sitting here, pleasantly eating Alfredo’s pizza and enjoying the lack of crime for once, and you have to go and steal something right under me.  And then you have the audacity to call me a bug?  It’s like you’re practically asking me to kick your ass!” 

And then the thief had more audacity to turn his back to the hero.  Spider-man couldn’t quite tell what he was doing, but a second later he was pulling on a brown duster he had pulled out of somewhere near the air duct.  Peter twitched.  He was not about to be ignored by some two-bit thief so the guy could get _dressed_.  That just didn’t happen to Spider-man.  That didn’t happen to _any_ Avenger (except maybe Ironman, but that was only because Tony was in the very bad habit of sleeping with supervillains). 

A quick snap of his wrist sent a long line of web fluid for the man’s back, but before it could make contact, the shady thief swung around and brought up a thin metal cylinder also pulled out of nowhere to catch the line.  A hard tug later and said metal cylinder was Peter’s hand.  It was glowing slightly, too.

“And what’s this supposed to do?  Is it, like, gonna blow up in my face or something?”  His spider sense wasn’t going off any more than it had before.

“Actually… _ouais_.”  And then there was a small explosion from the rod.  The sudden, unexpected heat caused the hero to drop it and jump back in surprise.  The metal itself rolled away and stopped at the thief’s feet, completely unaffected by whatever had just happened. 

“What the heck?!” Peter exclaimed.

“ _Merci,_ _m’sieu araignée_ ,” the longhaired criminal said, completely ignoring his opponent’s plight as he reached down to pick up the rod.  He leisurely placed it back into his coat before the lithe man nimbly pulled his shades off and tucked them inside a pocket.  Peter suddenly found glowing red eyes staring back at him seriously, although the thief’s smirk transformed itself into a slightly more genuine grin.  “I’ll be havin’ the bag back, too.”

“How about…no.  The only thing you’re getting is a one-way trip straight to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars…or whatever it is you’re getting for this.” He shook the bag in his hand. 

“Y’ know…Spider-man, _oui_?...Read all about you in dat paper.  The _Daily Bugle_?  Can’t say I agree wit’ half o’ dat filth they publish about you.  Not many heroes would stop t’ try an’ stop me from a lil’ harmless burglary.  But is what I’m doin’ really hurtin’ anyone when you could be off webbin’ up some rapist or mugger somewhere?”

“Um.  No, I guess not,” the hero found himself surprised to be saying.  It made sense, though.  This guy was only sneaking in some place—quietly—while there were people being physically assaulted elsewhere in the city. “But you’re still breaking the law!”

“An’ it’s kinda hard to argue breakin’ the law when you y’self do so on a daily basis.  Only reason someone hasn’t charged you f’ assault yet is prolly ‘cause the idea just hasn’t crossed their mind.  But I understand—somethin’ of a _hero_ myself, see.  Y’ do it for a good cause.  I do, too.  I ain’t stole nothing that’ll cause no harm to anyone, and if you let me go, promise you won’t catch me stealin’ again.” 

That smile was just so…beguiling and innocent, and the logic was so convincing that Peter couldn’t help but see the truth.  Then the thief stepped forward and he was completely ensnared in those hypnotizing devil eyes.

“I…I guess.  I never really thought about it like that before.  And, as long as you swear I won’t ever see you stealing again, you can have this back.”  One red web-lined spandex-clad arm held the bag out.  The tall man grabbed it, the grin on his face growing.  Peter felt himself flushing under his mask for some reason that he couldn’t understand, and he jumped away from that building as fast as possible. It wasn’t until ten minutes later that he stopped swinging above New York City, and that was only to perch on the spire at the top of the Empire State Building in awed contemplation. 

“What the hell just happened?” he wondered out loud.  But there was no explanation, and nothing to do for it, so Peter just put the incident out of his mind and continued on his way, barely able to shake the strange feeling the encounter had left him with.

**~~~**

It was a week before Peter thought about his strange encounter with the mystery thief again, and it was just his luck that it happened to be in the middle of an Avengers briefing.  He was seated near one end of the long table with his feet up, with Thor across from him and Bruce at the end.  Jan and Hank were next to him, and passing notes back and forth across the rich mahogany that clearly cost more than Peter’s whole life and blatantly ignoring Cap, who stood at the head of the table with a presentation of some kind showing on the wall behind him—something Peter took to say that Tony’s conspicuous absence just meant he was attending the meeting through technological means while Pepper held him hostage to finish all that paperwork the eccentric billionaire was in the habit of avoiding.  Either that, or he was in mad scientist mode again. _No one_ bothered Tony when he was in mad scientist mode.  Not even Captain America.

“So, as you all know,” Cap was saying, “We can’t get this information by usual means because whatever computer system they’re keeping it on isn’t connected to a network, so Tony can’t just download the info onto his brain.  So he’s useless.  So we’re stuck using more, uh… _conventional_ methods,” and here the patriotic blonde frowned distastefully in that way that informed all present that this was not Steve’s idea, this was Tony’s, and he had just been forced to go along with it despite his moral dilemmas because there was no other viable method.  “Wolverine called in a couple of the X-Men to help with the problem as we don’t have anyone currently on the team or in the area with the necessary… _skill set_ to do the job.” 

The door to the meeting room opened at that moment (proof to Peter that Tony was indeed listening in on the meeting because he always did have a penchant for dramatic entrances), and Logan stepped in, accompanied by Storm, and…

“ _You_!”  Spider-Man jumped to his feet, pointing at the elusive thief standing next to the African goddess.  He blushed under his mask as everyone turned their eyes to him, especially that red-eyed, devilish _thief_.

“ _M’sieu araignée_ ,” the insufferable man greeted with an insufferable smirk.  He looked almost exactly the same as the other night, with the long hair pulled back into the raggedy ponytail, sunglasses on his face, trench coat, and tight black and _magenta_ bodysuit.  In fact, the only thing Peter could immediately spot that was different was the belt he was wearing.  The silver belt decorated with a giant ‘X’.

“You’re one of the X-Men?!” was the next thing that erupted from the stunned superhero’s mouth, as Cap’s words brought themselves to the front of his brain.

He was met with a smirk in return.  “Told you I was somethin’ of a hero myself.”

Logan snorted.  “You two know each other, Cajun?”

“ _Mais oui_ ,” the thief responded lightly.  His tone and the look he shot Wolverine as all three X-Men took seats at the table made it seem as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. 

“Right,” Cap interrupted, clearing his throat to get everyone’s attention again.  “As I was saying, the X-Men have so kindly offered their help. We all know Storm—it’s great to see you again, by the way,” Cap directed at the African goddess, who responded with one of her aloof smiles and a nod of acknowledgement, “You should think about joining the team again.  We could really use you back here, and I think Thor misses you.”

“A most generous offer,” she replied evenly.

“And with her, Gambit,” the flag-clad hero continued the introduction. “Remy LeBeau. Kinetic based mutation, and—”

“Really good at breaking and entering?” Peter piped up, not quite as cheerfully as his tone would suggest. 

“F’ the good of society,” ‘Remy’ returned lightly, his glasses sliding down his face once more to reveal those deliciously sexy burning red eyes, even as the tall man leaned ever so elegantly back in his chair.  The stunned spider blinked himself out of the stupor he suddenly found himself cast in and shook his head, turning back to the meeting at hand. 

“So, basically, we’re resorting to having criminals do our dirty work instead of doing it ourselves?”

“Spider-man!” Storm chided, and underneath the mask Spider-man at least had the gall to look ashamed—not that anyone could really see.  He didn’t feel completely bad, though.  Something about the Southern thief just bothered him, not that he knew what it was.

“ _Non_ , _non_ , _non_ , not at all,” the Cajun grinned, and Peter found himself astonished at how dazzling that perfectly white smile was all of a sudden.  “F’ a job like dis, we definitely could use someone wit’ such unique skills as _yours_.”

When the daytime journalist finally came out from under whatever freaky voodoo that devil-eyed, Cajun man had clearly placed on him, he realized what, exactly, Remy had said, and could simply respond with, “You’re kidding, right?”

“…He wasn’t kidding.”  Peter announced two days later, as he flopped down onto the couch in the office of the Murdock half of Nelson & Murdock, relating the story so far to his second-best superhero friend. 

Matt, sitting behind the desk doing something that Peter supposed might be important, didn’t respond, but he seemed to have developed a slight tick in his lower jaw since the college student had barged in here a few minutes before and just started talking. 

“And then Cap decided that that’s a good idea for some reason, and you know how he is when he decides something, you just can’t not do it—”

“Yes, you can,” the blind man interjected.

“—You know how it is for _me_ when he decides something, and then Storm agreed, too, which means Thor automatically agreed—he’s still trying to get back in her pants since she dumped him for the X-men team orgies—and Tony disagreed, but I think that’s just because he and Cap might be having an argument.  I mean, usually they’re attached by waist and arm in mid-flight, but they’ve even been arriving at our fights separately, and then not going out for burgers afterwards like usual.  Cap actually called him useless, and Tony’s been holed up in his lab even more than usual…huh.  You don’t think he’s building a doomsday device aga—”

“Peter,” Matt interrupted, and he would’ve ignored him and kept going if not for the faint buzzing sensation that had started up in the back of his mind, indicating imminent danger.  That, and the tick that had moved to the redhead’s left eyebrow.  “Shut up.”

“You really don’t have to be that rude, Matt.”

“Would you just—I’m working.”

It was a shame that the look Peter shot him was completely lost on the lawyer.  “You never work.  You work even less than _Tony_ works.”

Matt slammed his papers down onto the desk to glare death in Peter’s general direction. Sadly, for all the redhead’s super senses, it was still aimed slightly to the left of Peter’s head and therefore lost all effect. “First of all, that is a lie, as I am not an eccentric billionaire, I am a _lawyer_.  I work hard, and I work frequently, and I even occasionally work in costume, and if I didn’t work, you would be both bankrupt and in prison right now, because I am still _your_ lawyer.  Second of all, this is research for a _side case_ I’m working on, and unless you’re sitting here because you want to help, you’re distracting me.”

“—I wouldn’t mind helping,” Peter cut in.  Matt ignored him. 

“Third of all, _you_ do not have problems. You have easily ignored minor irritations in your life.  You want to know what problems are?  Problems are when you have a crazy assassin constantly killing all your girlfriends!  Problems are when the whole damn world knows your secret identity so you can’t walk two feet out your front door without being waylaid by some asshole with a grudge, all while trying to maintain plausible deniability so you don’t get arrested— _again_ —because things always go to shit when you get arrested!”  The blind lawyer stopped to catch his breath, and Peter stared, mouth agape.

“You know…Matt…if you feel like you’re having another mental breakdown, I can just tell Foggy and he’ll—”

 _“_ I’m _fine!”_ Daredevil snapped.  “ _Problems_ are when the Punisher won’t quit hounding you and following you around everywhere you go because you were bored that one time and gave in and slept with him like an idiot and now he thinks you’re in a semi-committed relationship!  And, just for the record, I have _never had a mental breakdown!_ ”

“Right.  Never.  Of course not, that’s not what I—wait; you slept with _Frank_?!”

“It was one time, and it was in _jail_!  Now the goddamned bastard won’t leave me alone.”  If Peter didn’t know any better, he would say his friend was pouting now.  But Matt was a grown man with fairly extreme anger management issues, and he would probably attempt to take said anger out on the younger hero were Peter ever to even hint at something like that. 

“I thought jail was supposed to be like Vegas.  What happens there stays there and all that.”

“ _Frank_ didn’t get that memo, apparently.  And why do you have such a problem with this X-Men guy anyway?  Didn’t you and Felicia use to have a thing?”  The redhead seemed calmer now, and Peter breathed a sigh of relief.  It was always kind of awkward when your best friend was a crazy person and decided to have a mental breakdown right in front of you. 

Again. 

“He’s nothing like Felicia!  Black Cat is a wonderful human being and—hey, since when are you on a first name basis with her, anyway?”

“Since what happens in my bedroom _stays_ in my bedroom.”

“You slept with my ex-girlfriend?!”

“Yes.  She’s your _ex_ -girlfriend.  You don’t have a claim on her.  And also that’s really not the point.  You’re feeling threatened by this guy because he makes it hard for you to ignore your latent homosexual tendencies as you’re clearly more than a little attracted to him, and more than a little gay.”

“I’m not gay!”

“You slept with Johnny—yes, I know, sex pollen, but it didn’t make anyone else suddenly into anyone else, did it?—and you prance around in skin tight spandex all day knowing what you look like.”

“You wear exactly the same type of thing as I do!”

“I’m blind and have no idea what I look like.  What’s your excuse?”

Peter scowled and stood to his feet.  “You know what?  You’re no help.  You are an extremely bad friend, Matt.  I’m leaving.”

“About damn time,” the brunette heard his (ex) best friend mutter.  “But just because you don’t want to hear it doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

“Goodbye!” he said loudly, making sure to slam the office door behind him.

Matt sighed in relief, but was tempted to slam his head onto his desk when he heard a final call of, “And how do _you_ know what I look like, anyway?!”

_~~~_

Skulking around was extremely easy to do when you had spider powers, Peter had long ago realized.  Of course, doing so was a little more complicated when you hung around people with super senses, or people with telepathy, or people with a gazillion dollars and fancy sensors in their ceilings.  Still, though, Peter took it as a point of pride that he could get most anywhere undetected—especially in Avengers tower, albeit with liberal use of a certain spider sense to avoid setting off any of those fancy sensors.  Either way, spying on people was a skill he had long ago perfected and put to use as frequently as possible, even if it was often inadvertently.  People trying to make sure they were alone tended to forget to glance up at the ceiling, so it had often been the case that Spider-Man would be hanging around, minding his own business as he munched on his granola crunch bar, and someone would walk in and start saying something that was definitely not meant for Peter’s ears.

Today happened to be one of those times.

The college student would’ve loved to say that it had been a week and a half since he had last laid eyes on the current bane of his existence (maybe a slight overstatement as the X-Man had never tried to maim and/or kill him, but excuse him if he was still just a little miffed over being rendered a complete non-threat so simply; Peter still didn’t know how Gambit had done that), but in truth it had only been a week and a half since he had been forced to help out with morally dubious activities for the greater good—and, okay, so superheroes could get away with stealing stuff from bad guys for the greater good, but that didn’t make it right.  Even if, at the end of the day, stealing stuff hadn’t been nearly as hard or sexy as the movies tended to make it. 

Either way, Peter had fervently hoped that was the last he would have to see of Gambit for quite some time.  The X-Men _were_ a self-contained, anti-social bunch, after all.  And it very well might have been, had not Peter walked in on Thor and Storm making out in the hall the next day, leading to the announcement that Storm was rejoining their team on her off days with the X-men, which meant that Storm was hanging around more, and, as such, Gambit had been showing up pretty consistently to spend time with the white-haired woman.  The man had apparently even been invited to the Avengers’ poker night—which was completely unfair, in Peter’s firm opinion, as he was still banned on the basis of spider sense, which still made no sense.  Although, truth be told, the science nights he, Reed, Tony, and Hank had instead (they were all banned on the basis of being card-counting geniuses) were always both productive and fun, even if the other men occasionally tended to forget he was more than just a wise-cracking lab assistant and actually knew what he was talking about most of the time.

Still, it was the principle of the matter that counted.  And Peter would be lying if he said that Gambit’s very presence didn’t bother him on some intrinsic level.  Some intrinsic level _other_ than whatever Matt Murdock might want to imply.  That was part of the reason why he remained hidden on the ceiling when Storm and Gambit walked into the backroom for what was clearly a Very Private Talk.  That, and it was always kind of awkward to leave a room when you had been privy to the beginning of such a talk when no one had realized you were there.  Although, not as awkward as when your girlfriend walked into _your_ room to change, not realizing you were there, and then you tried to leave as soon as you understood that she was trying to get naked because your relationship hadn’t progressed to that level yet because you were still in high school and virgins and it was weird.  Gwen had gotten mad and called him a peeping tom and refused to talk to him for a week after that one.

“Remy,” Storm was saying from below, and Peter put a lid on his thoughts for the moment to pay attention to whatever crazy secrets the two might be sharing.  “Brother,” the white-haired woman continued, and Peter raised an eyebrow.  There was no way the two of them were related.  “You know I love you dearly and enjoy spending time with you, but why are you still here?”

 _‘What?’_ Peter thought to himself, not expecting that to leave Storm’s mouth at all, and the man down below echoed his sentiments out loud.  And in French.

“It’s simply that you’ve been here to see me almost every day since we finished what we were doing, and while I appreciate your company, I take that to mean you haven’t been back to the school in over three weeks.”  Storm was frowning, but she looked more concerned than annoyed. 

“I’m takin’ an extended vacation,” the Cajun replied easily, usually flirty smile fixed on his face.  Peter rolled his eyes.  “I think I’m long overdue for one of those, eh, Stormy?”

“Remy,” she replied, her voice crisp and serious, with no room for argument.

Gambit huffed, and turned away from her.  Peter wished that he had his stealth suit on because he really didn’t want to get caught spying.

“It’s Rogue,” he said after a long pause, turning back to face the other mutant.  And was that annoyance that Peter had just seen flicker over Storm’s face?  Either way, the name Rogue sounded familiar.  It had to be one of the other X-Men, if they were the reason the cocky thief refused to leave.  Although, in all fairness, he didn’t look too cocky now.  Just kind of put upon and frustrated. 

“We been fighting again,” the Cajun continued, and Storm laughed.

“When aren’t you?”

Gambit grinned and shrugged before continuing.  “Still.  Dat girl drives me crazy sometimes!  Goin’ on ‘bout how I don’t care about our relationship, as if I haven’t put _years_ into makin’ things work.”

Girlfriend problems, then.  Peter could relate to that.  But which one was Rogue?  Not Kitty, that was for sure.  Maybe the green-haired one?  But wasn’t she Magneto’s daughter or something—Magneta? Or maybe she was the purple-haired one.  But wasn’t the purple-haired one a ninja?  Rogue didn’t sound like a very ninja-esque name.  And now that Peter thought about it, hadn’t Matt mentioned sleeping with her at some point?  Psy-something, was her name.  So not Rogue. 

Really, though, he would’ve guessed the redhead— _Jean_ , his mind reminded him—if he didn’t know that she was actually with Cyclops due to all of Wolverine’s bitching and moaning on their bar nights.  But redheads had a way of screwing you over, Peter had learned the hard way.  And they definitely left you feeling like complete shit afterwards.  Not that he was bitter or anything.  Mary-Jane was only the _love of his life_.  Nothing important.

“She acts like just ‘cause she’s the one who can’t touch no one, she the only one who suffers, when most o’ the time she just sits back and bitches and makes me do all the work!”

Oh, _that_ one.  The one with the white in her hair, who took Ms. Marvel’s powers.  Peter definitely hadn’t pegged Gambit as the type of guy who would be with a girl he couldn’t touch.  He was so…flirty.  And charming.  It was damn irritating.  No one should be able to talk Spider-Man into letting them go.  _No_ _one_.  Well, except Felicia, but that usually involved a little more tongue and a lot less talking. 

“And she has de nerve to accuse me of cheating on her.  _Trois années_! That’s how long we been together!  And the only time I’ve gone off ‘n’ slept wit’ someone else was after she left me to die in de snow!”

And, okay, wow, so that was a level of dysfunction that he and Mary-Jane had never taken. Three years together and a possible murder attempt?  No. But the fighting and relationship problems, Peter could totally identify with.  It took him a second to recognize the feeling he was currently experiencing.  It was one of solidarity.

“So, barring any sort o’ emergency, I ain’t goin’ back ‘til she apologizes.”

“Then, barring any emergencies, you’re probably not going back for a while,” Storm replied evenly.  She ran a hand through her hair before sighing.  “Just cut down on your visits a bit, please.  I think you’re about to drive Spider-Man to murder.” 

“ _M’sieu araignée_?” Gambit grinned.  “He’s just mad ‘cause I charmed my way outta a fight.”

Peter squashed his feelings of irritation.  Anyone could be an annoying dickwad in the middle of a bad break-up.  He was a superhero.  He wasn’t going to let a little thing like that destroy this new feeling of solidarity with another superhero versed in crappy relationships.  Spider-Man was just going to have to suck it up and try and get to know this guy a little better.  Because Peter needed someone to empathize with, and it wasn’t like _Tony Stark_ could understand simple bad relationship problems.  The guy was dating Captain Freaking America after a string of supervillains, after all.

And, hey, if Storm liked Gambit, the guy really couldn’t be _that_ bad, right? 

~~~

Peter Parker had a Plan. It was, admittedly, not one of his better plans, but it was still a plan. It had been a little hard to put his plan into action over the past few days, as Gambit seemed to have taken Storm’s advice to heart and hadn’t shown up at Avengers Tower at all, not even to bother Wolverine a little, but today was the day.  As soon as he’d gotten back to the Towers from his classes, he had spotted the mutant chilling in one of the three living rooms, talking to Black Panther about what Peter suspected was body armour.  Dropping his stuff off in his room, he headed to the kitchen to grab a snack before skulking around outside the living room, waiting for T’Challa to leave.  The king didn’t disappoint, and not ten minutes later the X-Man was alone in the room, just waiting for Peter to implement his Plan.

“Hi,” Peter greeted, settling down next to the taller hero on the couch.  Gambit raised an eyebrow, but nodded back.

“ _M’sieu araignée_ ,” he replied.  His suspicious look was slowly morphing into his usual confident grin, and was it just Peter’s imagination, or had all the air just left the room?  Because it was suddenly hard for him to breathe beneath the glare of that dazzlingly white smile.  He was clean shaven today, Peter noticed.  Not that it was attractive or anything—or more or less attractive than the other man’s usual stubble.  He was only noticing because—good God, that _jaw line_. 

“I, uh—I’ve gotta go!” he exclaimed, all but running for the exit.  He didn’t even notice the low laughter following him as he scrambled out of the room. 

Day one:  complete and total _bust_.

It was another week before Peter worked up the nerve to try again—it really was just nerve, as Gambit had once again started showing up to bother Storm or Logan almost every day.  This time, he cornered the mutant right outside of Storm’s room.  Luckily, he managed to keep his wits about him as he approached the other superhero.

“So.  Um.  Gambit,” he began, only to be interrupted by that damnable smile. 

“ _M’sieu araignée,_ ” the Cajun responded as usual.  But then, “We don’t need to be so formal wit’ each other, do we?  Name’s Remy.”

Peter blinked underneath his mask.  “Oh, uh…sure.  Right.  Remy.  I’m, uh…I’m Peter.”  And if that was triumph that momentarily flashed across Remy’s face, Peter totally missed it in light of his sudden horror at the realization of giving away part of his secret identity. 

“Oh god,” he muttered, not even bothering to take his leave before ditching.  This time, he didn’t miss the slight snickering that came from the other man, but he had more important things to worry about than the other man finding him amusing.

Day two:  much, _much_ worse than day one.

Peter didn’t even want to _think_ about day three. 

Or the following days, for that matter, where each time he tried to stop and talk to Remy he’d find himself doing things completely out of character—like blushing and stumbling over his words when talking to another guy, first of all, and basically anything the mutant suggested, from the perfectly innocuous like grabbing him a drink to the kind of bizarre like giving Gambit a massage.  If Peter didn’t know better, he would think the X-Man had another, secret superpower and was playing games with Peter’s mind.

As it was, Peter was left with nothing but a vague sense of horror as he tried to figure out what was happening to his life. 

~~~

Storm hadn’t been around for days.  Peter could tell because in addition to not even seeing the faintest wisp of brown skin or white hair for days, Thor was moping again.  A large barrel of Asgardian mead had randomly appeared in the kitchen, and Thor had taken to watching Disney movies with Tony, who was clearly feeding whatever was happening entirely for his own amusement. Logan, as well, had gone missing at some point over the past week, so Spider-man was beginning to strongly suspect that there had been a sudden X-Men emergency.  Nothing had popped up on the news yet, but the news stations were primarily filled with reports of the Avengers’ last battle with Hydra, the presidential election, and the huge argument Cap and Tony had gotten into in public last week (the whole reason they had been fighting was apparently over who got control of the TV on Thursday nights.  Some great team leaders they were).

Between classes and visiting Aunt May and hanging out at Avengers tower, Peter was starting to find his week lacking.  Homework and stopping muggings could only do so much to take up all the extra time he found himself with now that Remy hadn’t been around in a while, since the Avengers were having a fairly low-key month.  Even the Fantastic Four were off planet at the moment, so Peter couldn’t go harass Johnny like normal.  Although, on the bright side, now Peter wasn’t turning into a babbling idiot every two minutes.  So it could really be construed as a win for him.

And then Doctor Doom attacked.

And then the Sinister Six showed up.

And then Venom decided it was time to go ruin Peter’s life again.

And, overall, it just turned into one of those weeks.

Sometimes, Peter hated his life.

~~~

Peter shifted around in his seat impatiently, waiting for his company to arrive.  He had been waiting at the small table in the fancy hotel bar Wolverine had told him to meet at for almost an hour.  It was a far cry from the dingy little superhero dive they usually held beer night, and a lot stodgier, too.  When Peter had first gone to order his drink, the bartender had given him a quick once over before carding him.  It was completely offensive, in Peter’s firm opinion.  At their usual place, he never got carded—whether he showed up in costume or not.  And then the man had the audacity to think Peter’s ID was fake.  Not that he’d actually said anything, but Peter could tell in the way the man examined and reexamined it a good five times before handing it back and giving him his drink.  He would’ve just sat at the bar, but with the way the bartender kept eyeing him up, he had hopped up and grabbed a booth instead.

And a good thing, it seemed, as he eyed Wolverine approaching, company in tow.  In the suddenly hectic past couple of weeks, Peter had completely forgotten about his Gambit problem.  Maybe that was all he needed, a couple weeks of space to forget about the man.  Because for sure right now, he wasn’t getting that impossible to breathe, dizzy, completely tongue-tied feeling he usually got around the Cajun, and Remy was certainly looking better than usual, dressed for the rather nice environment as he was.  Dress shirt partially—and tastefully—unbuttoned, black slacks pressed to perfection, leather shoes that shined in a way that said “I cost more per foot than you make in a year”, and (most shocking of all) no ratty trench coat to be found—now that Peter thought about it, this was the first time he had seen Remy in relatively normal clothes.  Maybe that was also the problem—that much skin-tight cloth could give any man a complex; Matt probably did have a point. 

Although, all things considered, this was really the first time Peter had seen Gambit without a smile plastered on—well, the first time from ground level, spying didn’t really count.  ‘ _More girl problems?’_ Peter wondered as he watched the two mutants approach. 

“Hey, kid,” Logan greeted, voice gruff.  “Hope you don’t mind: I brought the Cajun.”  Remy nodded in greeting as he slid into the booth across from Peter.  Even as morose as he seemed at the moment, he was still extremely enticing to look at.  Peter shook his head out to clear his thoughts. 

“Mind?  Why would I mind?  I mean, it’s not like he _knows who I really am_ or anything,” Peter glared at Logan, who pulled up a chair to the end of the table. 

 “Look; Gumbo’s girl dumped him so I decided to ply him with alcohol. I figure if anyone could relate, it’d be you, what with your girl and all.”

Now Peter’s glare darkened.  “For the last time, it was a _mutual break-up_!”

Logan snorted.  “Right.  And that’s why you holed up in your room with ice cream and crappy romance movies with Jan like some kinda teenage girl?”

“Ice cream and sad movies is _very_ _cathartic_!  And just because I happen to be in touch with my sensitive side, _unlike some people_ , doesn’t make me a teenage girl!”  Logan snorted, before leaving to go acquire their alcohol for the night.  Most likely on Tony’s charge card—but occasionally, he used the X-Men’s money.  It was the reason Wolverine always paid. 

“So…” Peter began, playing around with his long empty glass.    “I’m, uh…sorry about your girlfriend.  Rogue, right?”

“ _Oui_ ,” Remy replied forlornly, “’S’not dat big a deal, I s’ppose.  We do break up a lot. And at least dis time, she didn’t leave me t’ die in Antarctica.  Or inform me she was seein’ someone else.  Or put me in a coma. Again.  So…could be worse, I guess.”

“Uh…” and, really, how was one supposed to respond to that?  There was solidarity among brokenhearted men—because, yes, your heart could still break if the relationship was ended by both parties, no matter what Jan might like to imply—but then there was whatever _that_ was.  An abusive relationship was so far out of Peter’s ability to handle. 

The awkward silence was interrupted by Logan clanking four bottles of something Peter had never seen before on the table, two glasses following. 

“What is this?” he asked, taking a second glance.  Nope, still didn’t recognize it.

“Rum,” Logan growled, taking his seat.  “Got four bottles of their strongest.  Drink up.”

Just under two whole bottles in, Peter was starting to get a little concerned.  He had that pleasant, not-quite tipsy feeling he often got going on and Wolverine was clearly enjoying himself with his drink (but then, really, did it take much more than alcohol to make Logan happy?  Maybe sex, but that was a mental image Peter was thankful to never have, ever), but just about half of what they had collectively drank so far had been downed by the Cajun, who was definitely a tad bit more than tipsy, if the way he kept tipping over and half leaning on the wall was any indication.  As far as Peter knew, he didn’t have any super healing abilities or spider constitutions to rely on to save him from alcohol poisoning and a lifetime of liver disease.

“You think maybe we should cut him off?”

Logan glanced at Remy, who, for all that he couldn’t seem to hold himself up completely, was currently pouring himself another glass with rather unerring accuracy for someone so clearly shitfaced.  “Nah.  He’s good.”

“Mmhm,” the red-eyed Cajun agreed, nodding as he poured.  “’M _very_ good.” 

Logan grunted, nodded, and then stood, grabbing the unopened bottles as he dropped some cash on the table for the waitress who had come around a couple times.  “I’m outta here.  Make sure he gets back to his room.  1431.  Key’s in his front pocket.  This bottle here’s the cutoff point.”

“Wait…what?  You’re just leaving me here with him. _Why_?”

“Cajun’s about to start flirting with everything that moves.  Seeing as you’re sweet on him, should be no problem for you.”  And then Logan ditched.

“Wh—I am _not sweet on him_!” Peter exclaimed after his teammate, and then glanced around to see a couple people staring at him oddly. He groaned.  And then, seeing Gambit reaching for the bottle again, grabbed it out of the way.  “Logan’s not here, so I’m cutting you off.”  And that was definitely a pout, and Peter felt the urge to hand the bottle back over.  Shaking his head, though, the spider-themed hero stood up and reached around to drag the other man up.  Remy stood shakily, and one hesitant step confirmed that the thief’s usual balance was not up to par.  Peter sighed, his good feeling slowly evaporating, as he reached out an arm to steady the long-haired man.

It took ten minutes for them to get to the right door, and that was mainly because Peter had accidently hit the button for the fifteenth floor instead of the fourteenth (and, really, hotels that skipped the number thirteen were kind of stupid because just because you didn’t want to acknowledge an unlucky number didn’t mean that it wasn’t still the _thirteenth floor_ ), and it had taken a good five minutes for the elevator to come again, the whole time Peter holding what was essentially dead weight.  There were times when super strength came in handy, after all.  Peter hoped this was the only time where it would be in an instance like this. 

Finally, though, 1431 was in sight.  Leaning Remy against the wall next to the door, Peter reached into the other hero’s pocket to pull out the keycard.  And, if it had been anyone else’s life, they probably would have successfully gotten the keycard out, opened the door, and dropped Remy off.  Of course, if it had been someone else’s life, Logan probably wouldn’t have just left them to deal with the drunk Cajun.  As the case may be, this was not someone else’s life, just Peter Parker’s, and as such, instead of successfully extricating the keycard, he found himself pulled into a lip lock with one very drunk mutant.  And that stubble did _not_ feel nice against Peter’s jaw.  It didn’t.  _Really_.

“ _M’sieu araignée_ ,” Remy began, lips still against Peter’s, and any protests that Peter might have had kind of wilted away in his mind.  “ _Pete_ ,” he added, and then there was kissing again, more frantically this time, and was that tongue?  A small part of the college student was protesting—probably his more rational side—but instead of replying, he found himself threading a hand through Remy’s hair and kissing back. 

 _‘That stuff must have been stronger than I thought,’_ he mused idly.  And even though a part of him felt like he really shouldn’t be standing out in the hallway making out with someone, for once responsibility was thrown out the window.  Because, really?  This felt surprisingly good.  Like, better than _MJ_ good.  _Maybe_ better than Johnny, but that was only by virtue of no one spontaneously combusting and leaving Peter with odd burns that made it hard to eat—or, really, move—for a couple days. 

Peter’s happy bubble was suddenly popped by a loud, shrill scream, and he turned to see a prepubescent girl standing in the hallway and staring at them in horror. 

“Daddy, there are gay mutants kissing in the hall!” the girl wailed.

“I’m not a mutant!” Peter objected, a second before he scratched his head, unable to guess where the girl got ‘mutants’ from—not that he was _gay_ , either, but the oversight could be forgiven in the current circumstances—although a quick glance at Remy showed that the actual mutant’s permanently-attached shades had fallen to the ground in the middle of their make out session.  So maybe that could explain the whole…mutant thing.

And then, much to Peter’s horror, the girl’s father stormed out, a short, paunchy man in his pajamas whose bald patch was as red as his cheeks.  There was a lot of screaming and shouting, and Peter didn’t catch most of it, but he did manage to catch, “…call security!” and “…public disgrace…” as well as “—mutant problem! _And_ gays—” right before Remy, coordination magically _significantly_ better than it had been downstairs, but still nowhere close to usual (as in, it was a miracle he didn’t trip over those fancy shoes of his—probably Italian leather, and no, Spider-Man certainly did not get jealous about expensive shoes worn by superheroes who moonlighted as _criminals_ ), detangled himself from Peter, and approached the fuming father with an easy grin.

“Look— _m’sieu_ ,” the Cajun began, “This right here, it’s just a big misunderstanding, _oui_?”

“Misunderstanding my _ass_ , you _disgusting_ —!”

“Hey, hey,” Remy cut him off easily, voice suddenly smoother than a baby’s bottom wrapped in silk diapers, and Peter stood transfixed, sure he was witnessing magic happen.  “‘S’no need for anger here, is there?  Calling security, be a bit much.  We just mindin’ our own business, goin’ back to our room.  Not tryin’ to bother no one.  Wouldn’t you much rather take y’ girl downstairs f’ some ice cream?  No need to inconvenience y’self by draggin’ security up here, _hein_?”

It really was magic, as the man went from ripping out their entrails with his eyes to just frowning in avid disappointment in two seconds flat.  The red in his face toned down to pink as his shoulders relaxed a bit and he took his daughter’s hand.  His daughter who was staring up at her dad in confusion when he simply led her towards the elevator with naught but another glare in their direction.

Peter’s jaw dropped, even as Remy fumbled around to grab the keycard from his hand and then failed rather spectacularly at getting the card into the slot a good six times before he managed to get the room door open and pull them both in.  And that’s about where any coordination completely failed the thief as he leaned over to try and resume their make out session and almost fell over.  Or rather, he did completely fall over, but Peter managed to intercept him before he hit the ground and hold Remy back up and steady against the wall before addressing what it was that he had just witnessed.

“What did—what…just…how?! You—what?” Okay, so maybe not the most articulate.  But the drunken Cajun seemed to get the point as a lazy grin flitted over his face, and he pointed one finger at himself.

“Charm,” he said, head nodding proudly.

“That’s not _charm_ , that was like some kind of hypnotic…type…superpower…” Peter trailed off, suddenly frowning as he stared up at uncaring fool grinning back at him.

“’Xactly,” the Cajun replied.  “ _Charm_.”

“Oh my god.  I was right.  You _do_ have another, secret superpower!”

“Jus’ a bit,” Remy shrugged, “But let’s…,” he continued, hands moving to paw rather uselessly at Peter’s t-shirt.  Coordination was _definitely_ completely out of the picture. 

Peter had two options before him.  The first was what he should do.  Everything in him was screaming that he should do it.  That he should stop Remy’s roaming hands and take the Cajun to bed and maybe fix him up with some water or something, and leave and then address the fact that the man had been blatantly _messing with his mind_ for _weeks_ at some point in the near future because that shit was not okay.  But it completely explained _everything_ about their first meeting.

But as he stood there contemplating, staring into Remy’s mesmerizing red eyes, Peter said to himself, “Screw it!” and dove in for option two lips first.  He’d blame it on the charm in the morning because responsibility was for people with greater power than he had at the moment.

~~~

Peter woke up naked and covered in Cajun drool and filled with a sense of regret.  Suffice it to say, he didn’t stick around for the inevitable morning after fall out. 

~~~

“So I think I might _possibly_ be a _little_ gay, _maybe_.”  But then, did it really count when secondary secret hypnotic superpowers were involved?  Peter wondered.

Daredevil stared at Peter blankly.  But then again, Matt stared at everything blankly.  It kind of went hand in hand with that whole… _blind_ thing. 

“The term you’re looking for is _bi_ , Peter.  It exists.  It’s a whole thing.  I would know.  And you’re telling me this why?”

“Because I may or may not have shared a toothbrush with Gambit last night.”

Matt probably raised an eyebrow.  It was hard to tell underneath the stiff cowl.  “You what now.”

Peter huffed.  “Me.  Remy.  Bumpin’ uglies.  All night.”  He paused.  “You know.  Sex.”

Matt Murdock fell off the roof.

Ten minutes later and back on the rooftop none the worse for the wear thanks to Peter’s timely intervention and handy webshooters, Matt asserted, “You will never tell anyone about that.  _Ever_ ,” in that tone that struck the fear of Daredevil into all the various miscreants of Hell’s Kitchen.  And then, “And that was only because I never thought I would hear you actually able to say the word sex in your life.”

“Not because I slept with Gambit?”

Matt snorted. “Please.  I saw that coming weeks ago.” And then, before the inevitable blind joke could come from Spider-man’s mouth, he added, “Figuratively.”

Peter scowled.  Matt’s smugness suffocated the rooftop.   “That’s the last time I try and ask you for help.  How’s Frank?” he asked before swinging off into the night. 

A rather annoyed, “Fuck you!” followed his travels.

~~~

“Man up, Peter,” he told himself the next morning, shaking his limbs out as he prepared to knock at the door in front of him.  “You’re Spider-Man.  You’ve got this.”  The plain, unobtrusive wood door should not have been nearly as threatening as it was.  Yet, the _1431_ plastered on it loomed in front of him, taunting him with things Peter was trying hard not to focus on.  The hall itself seemed much more oppressively opulent than it had been the other night, but then again, that could just be because he was no longer distracted by a certain sexy Cajun mutant with sexy Cajun lips.  Still, he was _Spider-man_.  He was an Avenger!  He could handle one lousy X-Man with too much charm for his own good. 

Peter rapped on the door; two firm knocks, and stepped back to wait.  It was just his imagination that time seemed to slow down, and his heart really wasn’t beating loud enough to drown out all the noise around him, he knew that.  But the thirty seconds he spent waiting for the door to open was the longest thirty seconds he’d ever waited in his life.  He’d just raised his fist to knock again, when the door was yanked open – and thankfully, too, because Peter wasn’t sure he was in the right frame of mind to control his strength and he would hate to have to expense a broken hotel room door to his Avengers account.  Tony would never, ever let him live it down. 

Remy stood in the doorway looking as…well, as handsome as always, Peter begrudgingly admitted. 

“ _M’sieu araignée_?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.  “C’n I help you?”

Peter’s tongue was entirely too dry and heavy in his mouth.  It took more energy for him to move it than it did for him to take out Doc Ock on an off day – which was crazy because everyone knew talking was his super-secret, not so super secondary power.  His gift for gab was legendary, and to this day only surpassed by Wade Wilson’s.  Which Peter almost took offense to, except it made him feel better at night knowing that he wasn’t the most annoying man on the planet. “Yeah, I, uh…I kind of, um.  Wanted to, you know, just…talk about…the other night?”

Remy’s furrowed his brow, a frown stretching across lips that Peter desperately tried to tear his eyes away from.  This sudden fascination was very not good, and he chalked it up to Remy’s mysterious charm power.  Which, actually, also needed to be addressed, come to think of it.  But then Remy suddenly looked rather abashed, which was a strange look on the man for sure, and Peter wasn’t entirely sure that he liked it. 

“ _Merde_ ,” Remy muttered.  “Was afraid o’ this.  Don’t normally get that drunk.  I did something stupid, didn’t I?  _Désolé_.  If I took my teasin’ too far or something…I don’t normally mean anything by it.” 

Peter paused.  This…wasn’t what he had anticipated at all.  He didn’t even know how to respond, and just stood there, frozen.  And then he snapped back to himself.

“No, it was just, um…what?  Yeah, I got you up here, and then…your charm power? I—”

“Oh.  So you know ‘bout dat now.”  And his grin suddenly looked a lot less apologetic and a lot more completely and totally unrepentant.  “Guess my fun is done.”

“ _Yeah_ , I know about that now!” Peter snapped, suddenly indignant.  He stepped closer to Remy, getting right up in the taller man’s smug face.  “Where the hell do you get off?” 

“Ahh, s’no big deal, really.  Just some harmless fun.  And ‘sides, now you know, it won’t work on you no more.  No harm, no foul.”

“Yeah, except that time I let you get away with _stealing shit_ right under my _nose_ and—what?  What do you mean it won’t work on me anymore?” 

“’Xactly what I said.  It only works if you don’ know ‘bout it.  Unless, you know…you let it.”  Which meant…Peter blanched.  Which meant that he had slept with the man entirely of his own volition?!  No, that couldn’t be right.  And if it was…he didn’t know what to say.

“Okay.  Um.  I, uh…I gotta go.” Peter hoofed it out of there faster than Quicksilver on speed.

_Present_

“And, yeah, that’s about the gist of it,” Peter finished lamely.  Tony looked astounded, which wasn’t something the younger man ever seen before. 

“So…why didn’t you just tell him?” the engineer asked slowly, drawing out the words like he was talking to an idiot.  Which he absolutely was not, Peter huffed to himself.  He was, in fact, a genius, even if not one on Tony’s level. 

“Because there were a lot of complicated factors involved, okay!  He was drunk, like…black out drunk.  And I was impaired by his hypnotic charm thing!  And a little less than tipsy, I hold by that.  It’s not that simple, Tony!”  Tony had that irritating look on his face again, the one that looked like he wanted to give Peter a pat on the head and send him out the door with a lollipop to feel better.  Tony settled for patting a reassuring hand against his shoulder. 

“It really is that simple, Peter.  Even saying that he did somehow hypno-charm you with this ability, he said it himself:  you had to have _let_ it work on you.  You knew about it before you slept with him.  You _like_ him, Peter.  Suck it up, admit it, and go get your man, for fuck’s sake!”  

Peter frowned, and then jumped back up to cling to the ceiling.  Times like this, he wished he didn’t wear a mask, because it made glaring at the rather bemused Tony almost as moot a point as Matt trying to stare someone down.  It just didn’t work, and no one noticed.  “Well, fuck you, too, Tony, for not being any help at all!  I knew I should’ve just gone to Wolverine.”  Tony’s laughter trailed after Peter long after he left the building. 

Two days later, though, Peter was left with a lingering sense of regret for not trying to get a little more out of the engineer.  He hadn’t been able to once, in the intervening days, stop thinking about Gambit.  Their night together had been…fun, he was loathe to admit.  And he had gotten horny more than once at an inconvenient time when his thoughts had drifted.  Spandex was not built for hiding situations like that.  Yesterday, the Vulture had laughed at him when he popped an inconvenient boner.  The _Vulture_.   The guy had no right to laugh at him, he was old as balls and probably couldn’t even get a boner without medical help.  So fuck him.  And fuck everyone, including Tony, and especially Matt, for being the least helpful.

Although, Peter needed to stop storming off angrily from his friends.  It led to situations like the one he was in now, chilling at the Baxter Building, recounting the story to his number one, and least supportive, superhero best friend:  Johnny Storm.  His fingers tapped at the game controller on autopilot, and he winced at the way his character took a beating right before he got to the drunken hallway encounter part of his story and Johnny had to pause the game to laugh at him for five solid minutes.

“Why are we even friends, I _hate_ you,” Peter moaned.  “Why am I friends with any of you, you all _suck_.  And give shitty advice!”

“Oh my fucking god, Pete, you are so head over heels for this guy and you can’t even _see_ it.  You don’t sleep with anyone!  Not since MJ, man, and that’s been over for aaaaaages.  And you choose the…well, not worst, but most obviously criminal of all the X-Men to go for, like, this is fucking priceless!”  Peter reached over and jabbed the start button on Johnny’s button all of a sudden.  He took great joy in destroying Johnny’s unsuspecting character.  It was the little pleasures he lived for. 

“You’re even less help than Matt.”

“Well, obviously, I don’t care about making you see the ‘error of your ways’ or any of that bullshit.  I’m just saying, this Remy guy sounds pretty great, and this situation is hilarious and entirely of your own making, man.”

Which…okay, was a valid point.  Peter was at the place where he was maybe willing to accept that he was bi.  A bit.  He had slept with two guys now, which was just about equal to the number of women he had slept with.  Two girls.  He and Gwen had never gotten around to anything before she’d…well.  And Felicia was just as bad, if not worse, than Remy was, all things considered.  And maybe he’d just been mentally scarred by waking up with burns on his dick that one time, because he doubted otherwise he would still be stuck thinking about Remy two days later.   And the charm thing was kind of funny, now that he knew about it.  And the guy was a sucker for romance, but…

“But what if I’m just his rebound?  He just broke up with his possibly abusive girlfriend.  I don’t wanna be sloppy seconds!” 

“I don’t think you’re using that phrase correctly, but whatever.  I mean, hey, you don’t know until you try.  It’s not like you’ve got any other romantic prospects.  And you’re not in love with the guy, like, just go get your rocks off and if it doesn’t work out, leave well enough alone.  You might even end up making a new friend.”

Peter stopped what he was doing, and turned to face Johnny.  On the tv screen, his character proceeded to get totally decimated.  “I think there is something very wrong with the way you make friends.”

“Oh please, I’ve slept with most of my friends.  Including you that one time.”

“For fuck’s sake, we don’t talk about fucking sex pollen!  Okay?!  Okay!” And across the screen, Johnny won with a total knockout.  Peter tried to pretend like that wasn’t a metaphor for his life.   But, well, maybe Johnny was right.  And maybe Tony was right.  And maybe Matt was right, and he owed them all apologies.

Or maybe they were all assholes, and Peter would just say fuck them forever, and do what he wanted.

And if what he suddenly wanted happened to coincide with what they were all telling him to do, well, that was just because the sex had been good.

And he was willing to admit that now.

Through no fault of theirs.

Fuck them.

~~~

Of course, it was just Peter’s luck that when he finally decided he was going to tell Remy what happened, the man disappeared back into the bowels of Westchester, New York.  Some kind of crazy X-Men emergency involving forces of cosmic nature trying to destroy the world or some such.  Basically, something usually more the Fantastic Four’s realm of expertise.  But with mutants.  Maybe this was a sign.

“Or maybe I’m just a loser who needs to get a life, why is this so hard!” he yelled at himself.  He’d been standing at the door to the X-mansion for at least half an hour now.  The giant mansion doors loomed above him, all shiny oaken splendor.  He had yet to so much as lift an arm towards the doorbell.  Like a loser.  He felt like the worst kind of afterschool special right now.  He was a terrible, cheesy suitor in a shitty romance movie. He was Peter Parker, the least cool man in existence.  And he was currently face to face with Kitty Pryde, who had stuck her head out the door all of a sudden.

“You okay there, Peter?  You’ve been standing out here for, like, a long time. A really long time.   We have cameras, you know.”  And if he hadn’t felt dumb before…  “Anything I can help you with?”

“Ah, no, not really, I’m just kind of wondering if…Remy…is here?”

“Oh, yeah, he’s out back with Rogue, c’mon,” and she reached out a hand and yanked him straight through the wood.  Peter tugged his arm out of her grip, which was surprisingly hard to do.  She was freakishly strong, for no reason at all.  Or maybe it was just his nerves because, really, he had super strength.  Which he reminded himself for the fifty millionth time. 

“I’d rather speak to him, you know…privately? If that’s okay.”  Kitty narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

“Is there something you’re not telling me, Pete?”

“Nothing you need to know about.”

“ _Mmmhmmmmm_.”  And then she grabbed his arm again and dragged him through two walls, a door, a fridge, four children, a kitchen counter, and another wall before stopping in what appeared to be a private study.  “Here, no one should bother you.  I’ll go get Remy; he’ll be up in a sec.”  And then she was gone.  Only for her head to poke back in a second later.  “Although, and this is just for the record, I do expect to be fully informed of whatever it is this is about at some point in the near future, because if I have to find out that you guys, like, I don’t know, had sex or something from someone like Johnny I’m gonna be really disappointed in you.”  And then she was gone.

And what the hell.  Did Peter, like, wear a sign on him or something?  Or maybe Kitty was secretly psychic.  Maybe all mutants had secondary mental superpowers.  Except the ones who had primary mental superpowers.  He was so glad she wasn’t a telepath, because she would never, ever stop prying. 

And how had it come to this, really?  He was here, sitting in the X-Men mansion, about to remind a guy that they’d had sex and hope they could work something out!  What if Remy wasn’t the committed type?  Just because he’d dated the same girl for years, sans sex, didn’t mean he was interested in a relationship with Peter.  Or even more than a one night stand with Peter.  He seemed the one night stand type.  Sleazy and criminal and entirely too good looking with that jaw and those abs and that ass.  He had really nice hair, too.  And Remy had to use some kind of nice conditioner because it smelt surprisingly good, which was weird, thinking that, because Peter had always been a believer that sniffing someone’s hair was abnormal.  Unless you were, say, Matt Murdock or Wolverine and had super senses.  But Peter wasn’t.  He had mostly normal senses.  The only sense strange about him was his spider sense, which wasn’t going off the way he felt it should be, given the situation.  Even when the door clicked open, and a rather surprised looking Remy stepped in, it still remained silent. 

Even his own senses were betraying him.

Unsurprisingly, Remy greeted him with a rather befuddled, “ _M’sieu araignée_?” and closed the door behind him.

“Okay, I have something I need to tell you,” Peter began in a rush, “But first, I need you to stop with that Mr. Spider French nonsense, okay, and just call me Peter?  Or Pete, whatever, I don’t care, you know my name, use it.  This is hard enough as it is.”

“Okay.  Peter.  What’s goin’ on?”

“So, you know that night you got like black out drunk and I helped you to your room, and you don’t remember what happened – which is what black out drunk entails – and I showed up afterwards to talk to you?  Well, we, uh…we slept together.  That night.  But then you didn’t remember, so I didn’t know what to say, so I was going to leave well enough alone, but in a crazy twist I can’t stop thinking about you for some reason.  I popped a boner thinking about you while I was fighting Hobgoblin the other day, and he reeks like old lady panties.  All those pumpkin bombs.  And he’s not the only villain that’s happened with!  So somehow, you wormed your criminal way into my heart – or at least my pants – and I don’t know, but…everyone keeps telling me I have to say something, so that’s it.  I’m here.  Saying something.  You’re ridiculously good looking and the fact that I’m attracted to you makes me want to punch myself in the face. I’m still not over you charming your way out of fighting me, just for the record, but I can’t even stay mad about that because for some fucked up reason I just want to kiss you again, and I can’t even blame it on your stupid, ridiculously annoying charm power because you told me about it before we slept together!”  And, wow, word vomit much? Peter stood panting slightly.  He hadn’t even realized he had that much to say.    And Remy looked slightly shell-shocked.

“You’re who I had sex with?”  The mutant man finally replied, after a minute too long of total silence.

“Yes.”

“Huh.”

“’Huh’?  What does ‘huh’ mean?  Is that a good ‘huh’ or a bad ‘huh’?”

“Nah, I’m just…surprised, is all.  Didn’t think you’d actually ever go for it.”

“Well, I did.  It happened.  And I’m here.”

“And now y’ want…what ‘xactly?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe a date?  Yeah.  Yeah, that.  I’d like to take you on a date.  And just see where it goes?  Maybe?”

Remy nodded slowly.  His face looked entirely too serious, and Peter didn’t think he appreciated the lack of shit-eating grin. 

“I appreciate that, _m’sieu_ …I mean, Pete.  Y’cute, and I like you, that ain’t a secret. But, uh…me and Rogue, we maybe be working things out again.”

It was Peter’s turn to be dumbfounded.

“But…I thought you were broken up.”  Remy nodded in confirmation.

“We are.  But we break up all the time.  It prolly ain’t forever.”

“But…you don’t know that for sure.” 

Remy shrugged, very non-committal. “I love her.  An’ she loves me.  We work it out.”

Of all the situations he could have envisioned (and Peter had a very active imagination, he could imagine a lot), this wasn’t one that he would have even considered.  “I mean, that’s…that’s valid, I guess.  Can’t compete with love.  It’s the be-all, end-all of a relationship, isn’t it?  It’s exactly why Maryjane and I are so _happy_ and still _together_ right now, because of how much we both love each other!”  And okay, Peter was maybe starting to raise his voice a little.  He wasn’t bitter.  Much.  It was a mutual break up. 

“Look, I can’t say that I’m in love with you – because let’s face it, I’m not, I’ve barely even known you for two months, and I’ve spent most of that time irritated at how much I’m attracted to you, I’m willing to admit that now.  So there’s a lot that I don’t know about you. But just because you’re in love with her doesn’t mean you can’t give me a chance, like, c’mon, you two have the most unhealthy relationship ever!  Love isn’t just some grand answer to your relationship issues!  And who’s to say that give it a few more months or a year or two, I don’t know, we couldn’t have something ourselves?  You’re not even dating her right now!  You’re single!  And ready to mingle!  With me!  Mingle with me!” 

“You’re being a pushover!  You can’t just wait around for some girl to decide that she wants you back, it doesn’t matter how much you love each other, especially not if things aren’t working out!  God, even if you don’t go on a date with me, for your sake, move on!”  And then a lightbulb flashed in his mind.  Because like he’d realised that day on the ceiling:  he and Remy had more in common than they’d originally thought.  He’d been like that after the break up, so hung up on wanting back with Maryjane that he’d never wanted to consider other options.  It’s why it still stung that she’d moved away so far. 

Although, maybe it wasn’t the best to have said all that to Remy, who looked like he was seconds away from blowing something up.  His red eyes were flashing dangerously.  “Look.  I don’t care what issues y’ might have of y’ own.  But Rogue and I?  We are what we are.  Y’ asked me out, I said no, that’s the end.  We have nothing else to discuss.”

And that wasn’t at all how Peter had hoped this conversation would turn out.  But he’d brought this on himself, he supposed.  He knew better than to listen to Matt.  And Tony.  And Johnny.  And also himself, he supposed, because that spiel had not been a part of his plan at all. 

If Peter showed up at Jan’s a few hours later with a pint of Chocolate Fudge Brownie and a copy of _While You Were Sleeping,_ no one needed to know about it.  And because for the first time in forever God smiled on him, there were no super villain attacks that week, and he and Jan also got through a gallon of Chocolate Mint, another pint of Chocolate Fudge Brownie, two packs of Oreos, and a greatest romantic hits of the nineties marathon before Peter decided he was ready to reconnect with the world.  Or the dating world, at least, with a whole new set of prospects in front of him.

Although, this really was going to be the last time he ever listened to Johnny because setting him up on a blind date with Wade Wilson was acceptable in no version of reality ever.

~~~

Two weeks later found Peter in the midst of another quiet night, much like the one he’d had almost four months ago.  He was sitting on the edge of his favourite rooftop, chilling with another free pizza courtesy of Alfredo, when he heard a clanging behind him.  His spider sense didn’t even tickle, let alone tingle or buzz, but he turned around anyway.  He probably should have been more surprised to see Remy climb his way out of a vent, but somehow, it just seemed right. 

The man looked just as ridiculously good and disheveled as he had the first time Peter’d seen him. His jaw was still too perfectly curved and his stubble was honestly a little neater.  His hair also looked a tad more combed, but the ratty trenchcoat kind of ruined it all.  Even if it did add to his overall aesthetic.  As did the backpack that he had again.  Peter wished he wanted to punch him but now he just wanted another scoop of ice cream.  He settled for taking another bite of deliciously hot and greasy pizza instead.

“ _M’sieu araignée_ ,” the man greeted easily, like he hadn’t rejected him flat the last time they’d interacted or completely gone amnesiac about their sexy fun times that one time.  “Fancy meeting you here.”

“You know, one night I’d actually like to enjoy my pizza in peace.  And just so you know, if you’re breaking and entering again – for the good of society or not – I am morally obligated to web you up somewhere for the police to find.  Which you can’t charm your way out of this time.”

“Sounds kinky,” Remy replied with an easy grin. “Fortunately f’ y’ pizza, I ain’t here for any kind of illicit activity tonight.  Or at least…not that kind.”

“Then what kind are you here for?”

Remy sat next to him, his own legs dangling over the edge.  “So I been doin’ some thinking.  And talked with some people.  Includin’ Rogue.  Y’ might have had a point about me.  Not ‘bout Rogue specifically but me in general.  So I was thinkin’ I might take you up on that date offer.  If you’re still up for it.”

Peter wasn’t dumbfounded.  He was smooth and cool.  He also wasn’t a total loser because he’d just scored a date.  With someone who wasn’t Deadpool.  And someone who he actually maybe even liked a bit.  “Uh, yeah, totally, when?” he asked in a rush, his grin way too wide until he realised that his mask was folded up and toned it down a bit. 

“Now’s good for me.  I had Wolvie track y’ down for me, after all.”  Peter shrugged, and then scooted over, moving his box of mostly uneaten pizza between them.

“Sure.  Help yourself.” 

And then, out of his backpack, the superhero-sometimes-thief produced a bottle of Canada Dry.

Peter raised his brows, and then remembered that Remy couldn’t see that.  “Ginger Ale?”

“Goes with pizza.  Alcohol didn’t seem right.”

“Yeah but like…not even Coke?  Pepsi?  Sprite?  You went for Ginger Ale?”  Remy pulled out two cheap plastic cups. 

“You want some or not?”

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” he replied, and Remy leaned in to kiss him.

“Good choice.”

~~~

Peter woke up the next morning again naked and covered in Cajun drool, but any lingering sense of regret was quickly washed away by the delicious smell of a cooking breakfast. This might end in total disaster, he thought to himself, but it seemed sure to be a delicious ride getting there.


End file.
